The Last Garden

Peaceborough Town has a unique treasure, the garden of St. Mungo’s School. It was started over forty years ago by Mr. Percival Sweet, teacher and saint, but Mr. Sweet is with the angels now and his beautiful school garden is threatened with destruction, doomed to become a car park for the local shopping mall. If it belonged to the school all would be well, but it doesn’t, it belongs to Horace Blackwell, owner of the Shoe Polish Factory next door who aims to sell the garden for a deliciously huge pile of cash…

Extract: Wilba’s Wise Words

“True, wise little Dmetrius. But we aren’t wrong. You have fallen into the adult world here, children, and at the moment you are on the side of right.”
“But miss…Wilba,” said Magnolia, “if the garden belongs to Mr. Brightwell, we aren’t right. He can do what he likes with it, can’t he?”
Wilba stood, then paced up and down.
“Indeed, indeed, indeed. Now that side of it, I want you to leave to me. I need to do some digging of my own, and I will. But meanwhile, what you all have to do is create some kind of distraction that gets lots of people interested.”
“Like what, Wilba?” Nat asked. “We only got a hundred names on a petition, and nobody answered our letters. Nobody’s interested, and even if they were, they’ll think Mr. Brightwell’s right and we’re wrong.”
“Not necessarily, my pessimistic Nathaniel…”

Reviews

The author was recommended to my young niece by a friend of hers. Although I am nowhere near being in the target audience for Mr Delmonte’s books, I picked it up whilst on a visit to my niece’s and read the book at one sitting. The characters’ names have a Dickensian ring to them (Magnolia Roundtree) and even the unpleasant people are vaguely endearing. This is definitely the sort of book I would have read as a child and it’s only a pity that he wasn’t writing them all those years ago. I have borrowed the book to share with some much younger people as I know they will enjoy it too. (Amazon: Right click and open in new tab)

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